In a digital medium, the paint never
dries, which allows Richards to fine
tune his work. “I can keep working on
my pieces until I get really finely tuned
colours and shadows and highlights
and the pieces have a really nice glow,”
Richards says. “And in the end, I finish
with a traditional varnish to give it depth,
saturation.”
Mountain Galleries artist Shannon
Ford has a background as a jeweller,
and her successful career as a jeweller
and sculptor informs her unusual
process of painting. Ford’s acrylics are
infused with semi-precious and precious
gemstones, which she sources and grinds
into finer sediments in her studio. Her
artwork “Noble Buffalo” has elements
of pipestone, 24K gold, diamond dust,
sugilite, azurite turquoise, rubies, garnets
and silver nuggets painted onto the
canvas.

Ben McLaughlin is Mountain Galleries’
communications director and an artist in
his own right. About five years ago, he
started creating unique sound-resonating
furniture. “I’m experimenting with the
tonal properties of different species of
hardwood and then turning them into
musical interactive furniture,” he says.

The benches, coffee tables and side tables
are a visual and aural delight. With
furniture formed from wood like Peruvian
walnut, African Padauk, Vancouver
walnut and Canadian maple, McLaughlin
notes that the frequencies, originating
from an organic source, have a soothing,
therapeutic nature.

At Black Tusk Gallery, owner Bill
MacGillivary recognizes Native
Kwaguilth artist Trevor Hunt as a
master carver who has branched out
from traditional work in yellow or red
cedar to mediums of glass and metal.

Hunt’s panels, paddles and masks arecolourful and carved in the traditionalform, yet have his own style, which addscontemporary flair. Instead of using acarving process, working with glass involvessandblasting and etching. Designs arecreated by attaching rubber relief to theglass, where the artwork remains clear, withno etching.

Artist Wesley Wyse is a carver who has
worked in traditional First Nations style and
forms, yet has expanded his repertoire to
include non-traditional, three-dimensional
sculptures that are more contemporary.
While Wyse’s “Humpback Whale” has
elements of First Nations design, the whale
has a more realistic form. “He still uses
Native elements in his work but the rest of
the subject matter is more contemporary,”
says MacGillivary. In traditional First
Nations designs, creatures such as bears,
salmon or humans are represented with
exaggerated features such as deep eye
sockets or big lips, because the artists did
not want to replicate the true form, which
was considered offensive to the Creator.